


above these military splendors

by Nomette



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/F, spy AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-14
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-26 15:24:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,754
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6245089
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nomette/pseuds/Nomette
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cassandra clicked off the safety on her gun and barged through the door. Her first thought was that there were no hostiles visible. Her second thought was that Leliana lived like she was still in a safehouse. Leliana- the name had a certain romance to it: the singer, the actress, the woman who’d personally poisoned a third of the Russian cabinet before fleeing to NATO protective custody. There was no romance in this room: only a patched, homey couch, a mug of cheap tea, still steaming, and a bare metal chair.</p>
            </blockquote>





	above these military splendors

**Author's Note:**

  * For [varentains (storminlover)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/storminlover/gifts).



Cassandra clicked off the safety on her gun and barged through the door. Her first thought was that there were no hostiles visible. Her second thought was that Leliana lived like she was still in a safehouse. Leliana- the name had a certain romance to it: the singer, the actress, the woman who’d personally poisoned a third of the Russian cabinet before fleeing to NATO protective custody. There was no romance in this room: only a patched, homey couch, a mug of cheap tea, still steaming, and a bare metal chair. The walls were white, undecorated except for a single faded picture of St. Joshua. Cassandra had the same picture hanging in her own house. A sound, or a shadow moving in the doorway to the kitchen; Cassandra rolled behind the couch and fired a trio of shots, the silencer sputtering in the empty room. The enemy agent made a thin, wet sound, air bubbling through perforated lungs, and slumped to the floor.

“Leliana!” Cassandra called, because there was no point in being circumspect now. Silencers merely failed to be deafening. They were not silent.

There was no response. Cassandra’s heart sank. To come so close- and then fail-

She hurried to the entrance, crouched, gun drawn. A gunshot, deafening at this range: a burning line along her arm. She threw herself to one side, bringing up her gun. Something flashed silver behind the target and Cassandra registered as she raised her arm and shot that her target was already dead. The tip of a knife was protruding from his throat. He staggered forward a step and collapsed on the carpet.

Leliana’s first words to her were “You’ve made a hole in my wall.”

“My apologies,” Cassandra said, and stood. Her arm was burning. She flexed her hand experimentally: no serious damage, then. The floor was tile, at least, so the blood would be easy to clean. The door was still open behind them from her hasty entrance: she hurried and closed it. When she came back Leliana was examining the corpse in the living room.

“You are a good shot,” she said, french threaded through every syllable of her english. When she glanced up, the light caught her face and Cassandra caught her first real glimpse of the woman who had done more to annoy the russians than anyone since Napoleon. She was beautiful, of course. Cassandra had expected her to be. She had not expected the obvious strength of Leliana’s arms, or the easy grace with which she held her knife, or the cluster of freckles on her slim shoulders. No matter where Cassandra looked, there was some fresh, lovely detail to catch her eye, until at last she had to look away entirely or disgrace herself entirely.

“My apologies for the your wall. Do you have a mop?”

“A mop?” Leliana asked, startled, and then began to laugh.

“To clean up the mess,” Cassandra said, powerfully conscious of the blush that was probably staining her cheeks.

“How considerate you are!” Leliana said and rose. Standing, Cassandra could see that she was wearing a sleeveless dress and slippers. Cassandra had the vague sense that the dress was elegant, maybe even in a distinctively french way, and possibly expensive. Leliana really had been surprised at home.

“I have barged into your home. Diplomat, she sent me as soon as she heard, and with minimal intel.”

“If you had known, you would have knocked? I had not heard that you were so polite, Cassandra. Quite the opposite. But- ah! - I’m being rude. You’re injured.”

“It’s nothing.” Leliana’s kitchen was as bare as the rest of her house. One of the cabinets contained gauze, scissors, rubbing alcohol and a bar of chocolate. Cassandra sighed and removed her outer layer. Josephine liked to tease her for looking so obviously federal, but Cassandra enjoyed her three piece suit. It was a uniform, a reminder of what she was serving.

The bullet had skimmed several inches of her upper arm, leaving a bloody gouge behind. Leliana took the scissors and trimmed that sleeve off.

“I’ll do the alcohol myself,” Cassandra said, and poured some on. It stung and ached and bit into her skin all at once, but Cassandra had endured worse. She wiped the blood off her arm and wrung out the dishrag into the sink. Leliana, pale and lovely under the cold white lights of the kitchen, took her arm and began to wrap it in gauze.

“You knew my name,” Cassandra said, looking at Leliana’s hand on her arm.

“Of course! You are a legend. It may have been some years, but I am french, and we do not forget when someone gets into a firefight in front of the Cathedral.” There had been terrorists. No one had believed Cassandra, so she’d taken care of it herself, and afterwards the minister had insisted on giving her the Legion of Honor. Her face had been on the damned news.

“I had help,” Cassandra said, looking at Leliana’s hand on her arm. “What you did was alone. Besides, saving a politician does not count as saving a human being.” Leliana laughed.

“That is the Cassandra one expects,” she said. Cassandra snorted.

“Glad to deliver. We’d better call Diplomat before she sends a swat team to come find us.”

“Josephine does tend to worry. It would be unbearable if she were not so good at it.” Leliana knew everyone, evidently. Cassandra shook her head, amused, and took out her phone. She called in the mission as Leliana fished plastic bags out from under the kitchen sink and laid them out, then stacked the bodies on them.

There was a thump in one of the back rooms.

“Wait,” Cassandra said to Josephine, and snatched up her gun and aimed it for the bathroom door. In the living room, Leliana held out a palm. Wait. A large white rabbit scampered out of the bathroom. Leliana snatched it up before it could hop into the bloody marks on the floor and took it to the back room. In the resounding silence, Cassandra heard her call the creature Schmooples and scold it for scaring their guest. It was good that she spent some time in the bedroom, for it took Cassandra considerable effort to stifle her smile. She plugged in Josephine’s number to avoid being caught doing nothing when Leliana returned, and was confirming the identity of the dead Venatori when Leliana came back out.

“Here’s Leliana, she can confirm for you that she’s fine,” Cassandra said with relief, and held out the phone. Leliana took it and put the phone to her ear, then greeted Josephine in a lovely, startling Spanish. There was laughter from the other side of the phone, and then a quick exchange, almost too fast for Cassandra to follow. Leliana’s eyes tracked to her face, and it occurred to her abruptly that she was standing there and listening, obviously and rather rudely, to someone else’s conversation. Leliana winked.

A clean-up team arrived, two of Cullen’s sour looking templars, and Cassandra helped them carry out the bodies. On her way out, she felt a prickle, like someone was watching her, but when she glanced upwards Leliana’s window was empty.

 

Cassandra kneecapped two men in a blind alley and killed a third to save sixty hostages and forgot about Leliana until the next time she was in Paris, when Josephine passed on the word that she was invited to dinner.

“Me? Why?”

“She said that if you really repented of your actions, you could come and help her spackle the holes in the wall.” Josephine laughed, but this seemed reasonable to Cassandra, who agreed. She arrived to dinner in her work clothes, only to find Leliana in a dress that was definitely expensive and deeply, perplexingly attractive. Perhaps it wasn’t the dress at all: perhaps it was only Leliana, with her strong, graceful movements, and her startlingly direct gaze. Cassandra realized she was staring.

“I was expecting to work on the wall,” she said, feeling an unpleasant blush travel across her face.

“You ridiculous creature,” Leliana said. “I blame Josephine. Come on in.” Cassandra had brought spackle and a trowel: she dumped them by the door and sat awkwardly in the kitchen while Leliana fetched them drinks from the kitchen.

“Wine, or beer?” Leliana called from the kitchen.

“Wine,” Cassandra said, thinking vaguely of the summer wines she had enjoyed as a girl growing up in Greece. Leliana returned with two wine glasses and sat next to her on the couch close enough that their arms touched. It occurred to Cassandra that Leliana was flirting, not just in the offhanded way that beautiful charming women flirted with everyone, but flirting with intent. St. Joshua was watching them from his portrait on the wall; Cassandra raised her glass to him.

“I have the same picture,” she remarked.

“To victory at Jericho,” Leliana said, and smiled.

The talk at dinner revealed that Leliana and Cassandra knew most of the same people, had been to the same cities, and had fought in the same campaigns, if in very different ways. Cassandra had been on the front lines, earning various boring medals for distinction, while Leliana had been behind the lines, putting information in the right ears and knives in the right backs.

“It’’s all classified, of course, so you didn’t hear any of it from me.” Cass, who wasn’t sure entirely how much wine she’d had, laughed.

“Well, when they torture me I’ll be sure to blame it all on Cullen.”

“No one would believe that Cullen noticed anything that wasn’t troop movements or the military budget,” Leliana advised. “Mais- you two are friends, aren’t you. You’re trying not to look offended on his behalf.”

“Cullen is a better commander than soldier, and a perfectly fine soldier at that,” Cassandra said tartly. “We can’t all be beautiful, glamorous spies.”

“Are you calling me beautiful?” Cassandra snorted.

“You know damn well how you look.”

“Well. Do you know how you look? It looks like you’re flirting with me.”

“Hmpf,” said Cassandra, a blush spreading across her face. She barely stopped herself from accusing Leliana of having started it like a small child. “Perhaps I should excuse myself.”

“No, don’t,” said Leliana, and grabbed her arm. Cassandra flexed, the muscles of her arm drawing Leliana’s fingers apart, and Leliana let go.

“We are so often alone in our works,” she said, staring up at Cassandra. “Pass some time with me.” Cassandra thought fleetingly that she ought to refuse, but instead she leaned in and caught Leliana’s lips with her own, dizzy with the sudden contact.

“I-- shouldn’t---” Cassandra said, conscious of a blush so powerful it threatened to immobilize her, and fled.

 

It was a bad year. A mole in the upper levels sold information to the USSR and Cassandra lost every person who’d ever fought beside her when she was a new recruit, and then some. When she tracked the mole down, he turned out to be her old training director, Lucius, and he had the blind presumption to ask if she wanted to join him. She jammed the butt of her rifle into his torso until she heard his floating rib snap, then beat him senselessly, beat him until she was nothing more than a shattered container spraying blood and anger wildly and Cullen had to drag her off the body.  

They dumped what was left of him at central for interrogation and Cullen gave the report while Cassandra bound her sluggishly bleeding knuckles with tape in the infirmary, her body aching with fury. In her state, every detail of the plain, white infirmary made her more furious: she wanted a pile of corpses so she could rub Lucius face in them like a badly trained dog, not clean walls and sterilized instruments. She could have broken every bone in her hands on his body and still not satisfied her churning bloodlust. The last time she’d been this angry, she’d just found her parents’ corpses hanging from the state building with signs proclaiming them traitors around their necks.

Leliana came in as Cassandra was stripping out of her bra. A piece of shrapnel was embedded in her side, and it had soaked her though with blood.

“We’re going to get all the information we can, and then we’re going to torture him,” Leliana said, her eyes flickering to the blood stained remains of Cassandra’s body armor.

“Good.”

“I didn’t mean in the abstract. I, and a few assistants, are going to torture him. Did you have any requests?” Leliana’s voice was very clipped, calm and professional, no sympathy at all. A dim part of Cassandra noted that she was staying out of arm’s length. Good. Cassandra wouldn’t have wanted anyone but a professional working on Lucius.

“Just let me kill him when you’re done, if you can,” Cassandra said, and tossed her bra on the floor. The shrapnel was a tiny, twisted thing: she pulled it out, her fingers annoyingly slippery with blood, and tossed it on the floor. Leliana’s eyes tracked the arc it made, then snapped up to Cassandra’s face.

“Take care of yourself,” she said, french heavy in every syllable of her words. “We can little afford to lose more to Lucius.” And then she was gone. Only propriety prevented Cassandra from chasing after her. Instead, she slammed the door shut, dug out the bottle of whiskey the doctors kept hidden under the sink, and gave herself to grief.

It was many days before Leliana called her, each longer and more grey than the last. She was on her way to church when her phone rang. The number was unlisted. One of two days she left the church still burning with anger, but one of two she had some measure of peace and that was more than other activity offered. She had been taken off missions while Josephine figured out the extent to which they’d been compromised, and Bull had stopped sparring with her after she’d snapped two finger bones in the process of breaking his jaw.

“It’s time,” Leliana said over the phone, her voice clipped and clear.

“On my way,” Cassandra said, and hung up.

She waited for Lucius to recognize her before pulling the trigger.

 

It was a season of grief. Josephine was injured in some sort of scuffle involving a family visit and Vivienne took her post, terrifying the underlings at the front desk. An ambush left one of Sera’s people dead and Sera herself in the hospital: without her presence, the silence in the main office was glacial. A fear of Cassandra had developed among the rank and file, so that only Cullen would speak to her. She took her meals in private and worked out in her apartment, silent and drawn. She was a weapon waiting to be fired.

On a cold, rainy day, Leliana came to her after church, her hair bright in the fog. She opened an umbrella obviously large enough for two and lifted it slightly. Cassandra took the obvious invitation.

“Do I have a job at last?”

“Yes, but not the one you want. Josephine is finally going to earn her title, which means that I am going to be taking her seat.” Leliana’s face tightened slightly when she said this: the office gossip had maintained that Leliana was out of the game at last, and glad to be so. Cassandra wondered what they had said to her to get her back in. “In their infinite wisdom, the powers on high have decided you ought to sit next to me to make sure I am not shuffling the papers.”

“I am not a diplomat,” Cassandra said.

“Oh, I have no doubt of that. Think of it as nothing more than getting a first look at the interesting jobs.” Leliana had steered the two of them to a bakery. They ducked under the awning and bought pastries, then sat at a table. Between bites of her eclair, Leliana slid a folder across the table to her.

“The people who know these things shouldn’t be sent out into the field,” Cassandra said, but she took the folder.

“Then don’t know them,” Leliana suggested. Her manner was wholly different than the woman she’d been at her house, or in the office-precise, calm, lovely as a statue, sharp as the cold.

“I’ll do my best,” Cassandra muttered, and lost herself in the details. It was a busy time: the Iron Curtain had come down so recently, and there were so many people fleeing everything they’d done, spilling out from behind their protective borders and out into the world. Cassandra had been too long without a gun in hand, and she was itching to go and fight again.  

“Let me know what you think of these operations,” Leliana said after she finished the first brief. “I will be available on Josephine’s line.”

“Noted,” said Cassandra. She noted when Leliana left, but didn’t watch her go, immersed in her reading. When she finally looked up, there was a sandwich sitting on the table, and a cold cup of coffee, black, just as Cassandra liked it. Leliana had long since returned her teacup, but the smell lingered in the air, and for a moment Cassandra fancied that it was a kind of perfume. Loneliness was making her stupid again. She brushed it off, ate the sandwich and drank the coffee, then rose, careful of her coat and documents. Leliana would never wear perfume. One look at her movements, the sparse lines of her face, and you could see that she was a woman who spared nothing. The thought was an odd sort of comfort to Cassandra: she held it in her mind as she walked home, the documents burning in her coat pocket.

 

To lift spirits, Josephine threw a small sort of goodbye party. Sera attended, her leg in a cast, and used her crutch to trip Cullen and catch the hem of Vivienne’s dress while Toro and  Dorian tried unsuccessfully to hide their laughter. Cullen arrived early, Varric late and accompanied by a glowering woman who Cassandra recognized vaguely from the tech division, his hand on her hip. Cole, as usual, appeared without anyone having any real recollection of how he’d appeared. In revenge for the earlier stunt with her dress, Vivienne convinced him and Solas that Sera was dying to hear about their recent research, then stole her crutch, leaving Sera stranded and surrounded. Cassandra watched from a dim corner of the room as Sera realized the trap she was in and glanced wildly around, but Toro and Dorian had slipped off to the bathroom.

“Should we rescue her?” Cassandra asked. To her delight and alarm, Leliana had ensconced herself in the corner with Cassandra to avoid Dagna’s lethal cocktails, and then stayed.

“And ruin Vivienne’s work?” Leliana asked, and put her hand on Cassandra’s shoulder. “Besides, look how happy Cole is.” Cassandra snorted. Sera was spared from further research by Josephine standing on a chair and calling for everyone’s attention.

“It has been a pleasure working with you,” Josephine said, her face red with the pleasure of hosting and champagne, and lifted her glass.

“To our lovely diplomat,” Cullen shouted, and the room broke into cheers. Josephine flushed, so overcome that she let him pick her off the chair and set her down.

“A man with ambitions,” said Leliana. Cassandra snorted.

“Sera and Josephine are a known couple. I think Cullen’s aspirations are just to touch a woman in case he dies on his next mission.”

“And yet, you and the commander…”

“Your intelligence is better than that,” Cassandra said, mock-severe. “Some spymaster, to fish for information so bluntly.”

“I could be more blunt, but it would involve a knife.”

“That would make your point, to be sure. But Josephine will make you regret it if you ruin her party.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you were the sort to hide behind another woman’s skirts, Cassandra. Why should Josephine ruin me, and not you?”

“Is that an invitation?” It occurred to Cassandra dimly that not only was Leliana was flirting, but she was flirting back. She ought to say something, suggest that she wasn’t really up to the sort of sparring Leliana had in mind, but it would be...unnecessary.   A stupid gesture that would certainly leave her alone in her corner without the benefit of Leliana’s company.

“What sort of masochist would invite ruin on themselves? I’m not Cullen.” Leliana’s voice was warm and biting, like a good whiskey, and her eyes were sharp and bright. It occurred to Cassandra that Leliana might, in fact, be the sparring partner that she’d been longing for all along. It felt strange, to be happy, a betrayal in the face of all that she’d lost. She tried to push the thought away, but it lingered. Only when she was entirely drunk did she manage to forget, and by then Dorian and Josephine were upon her, dragging her and and Leliana into a game of Wicked Grace. Cassandra played badly, but not so badly as Cullen, who lost his shirt to Josephine, or Sera, whose cast was lovingly embellished with dicks by Dorian after she passed out at the table.

Just as Cassandra was moderately bad, Leliana was moderately good, and won steadily throughout the night. She and Josephine were conspiring about something: they kept whispering and smirking behind their cards. Cassandra ignored them in favor of pouring her drinks into Cullen’s cup when he wasn’t looking. One of them might as well avoid disgrace that night, and Cullen’s quest to finally find a woman would be more successful if someone saw him with his shirt off. A few more rounds and some truly objectionable party music, and the party finally wound down. Leliana and Josephine, truly indomitable, continued to play cards with Toro while everyone else lay collapsed around them like they’d been tossed there by a hurricane. Cassandra, who had wisely worn a suit with a warm overcoat, stole a sofa cushion and slept in the hall.

 

The party went unmentioned. Cassandra recovered from her hangover and returned to work, where Leliana, cold and glittering, began their career as conspirators by disagreeing with her entirely about how the operation in Istanbul ought to be done.

“What is the point in letting them know, for free, that we are interested? What is the point of gathering intelligence, if we just turn around and give it away afterwards?” Cassandra refused to be cowed.

“Then send Dorian, he knows how to be discreet, even if he doesn’t like it. You want discretion? Be discreet in Poland. Be discrete in Japan, or China, or Brazil. Not here, not against them.” Leliana scowled, eyes narrow, and signed off on the order to send Dorian. They worked through lunch, none of the arguments as biting as the first, and Cassandra took the last mission.

“You put this on the bottom deliberately,” Leliana said. It was cold, but not disapproving. “I don’t even disagree. I expect you’ll do quite well.” There was the faintest hint of a smile on her lips, and then she signed off, closed the folder and put the sheets away. Cassandra paused, waiting for--- nothing. She thanked Leliana for her expertise and went.

 

Cassandra killed six men and saved the prime minister of a country and his family without them ever being aware of her footsteps in the comfortable hall of their life, and it felt like a gift. She hadn’t known how badly she wanted to be back in the field until she was there, stepping off a plane with her gun tucked in her jacket, already scanning for targets. Work was her lover and her mistress, the only steady thing in the winding career of her life. Comrades died, governments rose and fell, lovers became former lovers and then former people, but there was always some small amount of good to be found in the world if you could just put your shoulder to the wheel and push.

Success made her generous, and it occurred to her vaguely that Leliana did not have the comfort of the road to distract her from her papers, so she bought a package of tea for her on a whim. Buying the most expensive package in the house seemed boorish, so she bought the second most expensive, assuming it would be good, and turned it in with the report.

Months went by. Cassandra’s grief faded slightly: instead constantly engulfing her, it became a wave, rising and receding. Little things still pained her: the way the tunnels to the seeker headquarters stayed closed and sealed, the way her birthday passed without a phone call from Daniel. Leliana was a constant through the days, hard and glittering as a diamond, but far less conspicuous. They argued often- about who to send where, about dead drops and paper trails and the proper procedure when an agent was compromised.

“We cannot simply go in because someone is injured,” Leliana said, her eyes cold, her mouth a hard line. “You trust your soldiers to survive. They must trust us to know. It is our job to know, to find them, to draw them out when it is safe and necessary and not a moment sooner.”

“And what if we misjudge?”

“What if the wind moves your bullets? I would trust you against a hundred other soldiers. Trust me against the other spymasters.” It was not an argument Cassandra won. She went into the field frustrated and spent her heartache in quiet, careful bullets, and on her way back home she bought a little bag with a rabbit on it for Leliana. It had become habit, something she barely thought of. An offering, for the woman who took it on herself to know everything.

It was the dead of night when she returned at last to her apartment, her hair soaked from a thunderstorm that rattled the walls and made the windows shake. She was shrugging out of her boots when the doorbell rang. Leliana’s face was invisible in the darkness of her hood, but Cassandra recognized her fine grey gloves and work boots and opened the door.  

“What is it?” she asked, and Leliana handed her a field kit.

“Someone in the upper echelons is accusing you of having killed Lucius to cover up your collusion. Get ready to run. I’ll cover you.” Cassandra gaped, paused, and then breathed in and reset.

“How long do I have?”

A flash, as though from muzzle fire, and Cassandra threw herself to one side, pain blossoming in her side. The walls of her place were selectively reinforced to stop bullets: she crawled into her kitchen, keeping her head down, and waited. Glass came spraying over her head: whoever was outside was shooting out the windows one by one. Cassandra crawled behind the couch, ignoring the spikes of pain every time her left side brushed the floor. There was a crawlspace going from her kitchen to the second floor: she wiggled her way in, climbed the ladder, peered out the window and shot the enemy agent in the head as he was coming up to the doorstep.

Footsteps on the stairs. “Leliana?” Cassandra said, ready to shoot.

“It’s me,” Leliana said. During the day, her hoodie was small and notably elegant. At night, it made her a shadow, nothing more than a stain on the wall. She held out Cassandra’s kit to her.

“It’s all clear from here. I got the other one. Will you be able to run with that?”

“They got the kevlar. I’ll be fine.”

“Good. Go.” Leliana was a dark shadow in Cassandra’s dim foyer, a voice issuing from a wet jacket. She tilted her head upwards and leaned in, as thought to whisper some private revelation, and kissed Cassandra on the cheek.

“What?” said Cassandra, and Leliana smiled humorlessly.

“Do not return. Do not attempt to help. Do not contact anyone. I will find you.” She handed Cassandra’ field kit to her and vanished down the stairs. There was a train ticket tucked in the front pocket of the bag: the 4 AM to Istanbul. Cassandra grabbed her umbrella and headed out into the rain.

The pain in Cassandra’s side had mutated into a band of agony stretching from the bottom of her ribs to the middle of her stomach by the time she reached the train yard. The ticket was not for a passenger train, but for freight, which meant that it wasn’t the sort of ride where you showed your ticket to the conductor. Cassandra checked for railway guards and vaulted the fence, then headed down into the trainyard. Two tough looking men with guns hidden in their jackets were making a sweep of the train cars: she started to duck away on instinct and then decided against it and approached them.

“I have a ticket to ride freight,” she said, watching their hands. The men glanced at each other.

“The boss did say the nightingale had a favor coming through.” Cassandra handed over the ticket. There was a little dragon drawn on it, a joke at the expense of the Pentaghast coat of arms.

“Yeah, that’s it. Come with us, lady.” Cassandra followed, not wholly convinced that she wasn’t going to catch a bullet in the back. The night had faded into early morning in the time it had taken to get to the train yard, but the night fog was still out, swirling on the ground and ruining her visibility. It was perfect weather to disappear in.

They led her to a train car filled with the rusted remains of old cars being shipped south to be destroyed, and directed her to a hidden cubby in the wall. It wasn’t much- a cot, a bucket, some water and a chunk of dry bread- but it was better than nothing. Cassandra sat sleeplessly on the cot for the first few hours of the train ride, thinking of Leliana, of Lucius, of whatever shadowy enemy remained in the higher levels of the government, throwing authority at her. It was a common mistake. People assumed that because Cassandra was a decorated military veteran, that she had obedience down in her bones like Cullen and Aveline. They forgot that she had seen her parents hanging from the statehouse as a child, that she had rebellion in her blood. She had not come to the military to reinforce the government’s justice, which she had always found to be lacking, but to create her own.

She had survived worse betrayals, and would survive this one. In some way, she had expected it: Lucius had died too easily for the sort of damage that had done. Someone had sacrificed him, sent him to die at Cassandra’s hands. The only surprise was Leliana. Leliana had found out, and found her, and gifted her a few hours, maybe a few days, and a kiss. Cassandra’s hand moved, almost involuntarily, to her cheek, and she thought of all the charm that Leliana had at parties and all the coldness that she had at work, and resolved to return the kiss at the next possible opportunity.

She reached Istanbul after three days of suffering the rattles of the train compartment. Istanbul was warm, the city decked out to prepare for Ramadan, the mosques trumpeting the call to prayer five times a day. Cassandra had 500 hundred american dollars, a small pistol, and vague knowledge of the city’s gangs. Dorian was here on assignment, but it would be better for both of them if she didn’t visit. After a few minutes of deliberation, she bought a scarf, wrapped her head to disguise her distinctive short hair, and exchanged the american money in her suitcase for lire. A man followed her on her way out of the money changers, his eyes on her bag. A mugger. She waited until the two of them were shaded by the trees, then grabbed him by the jacket and threw him into the the river.

A ferry was leaving: Cassandra bought a ticket and hurried on. The destination turned out to be a tiny town where only one person could speak any language but turkish, a pit stop for boats on the way down up to Russia. It was four months before Cassandra saw anyone from HQ.

 

They were driving to the dock when Cassandra spotted Sera. Cassandra was in the passenger seat, listening with half an ear as Evrim talked to her in his bad greek about the fisherman’s catch. She had expected the wait to be a torture, but the days had gone strangely quickly. There was a rhythm to the small town, the people rising early to their appointed tasks, the calls to prayer, the busy and frantic lunch, the slow hours of the afternoon. Cassandra would be glad to return to work, but she did not regret her time. It had been a vigil, time at last to remember her dead and begin the slow process of living in the world without them.

Sera’s head was bright in the warm sunlight, a spot of gold among all the dark-haired men. She was sitting on the prow of a boat, chattering easily to the boat hands. Cassandra made her apologies to Evrim and walked quietly along the dock. Her gun had long since been hidden; she hoped she wouldn’t have to run.

“There you are,” Sera said in English when she walked up. “Birdy’s been looking for you, you know. Nice scarf.” Cassandra smiled dimly.

“Here I am.”

Sera explained the terms of her exile on their way back up the river.

“So it turned out that Samson, you know Samson, big guy up at the top, Cullen’s friend- well it turned out they got him too, some kind of addiction. Birdy was busting her ass to find out what happened, sending people out right and left, we all thought she was gonna snap. Found Samson about two months back, yeah? I was the one that thought of asking the powder pushers.”  Sera stretched luxuriously.

“Birdy?” said Cassandra.

“You know, red-head, talon grip on the office. Frostier than Vivienne. Nice knickers, though.”

“Leliana?” Sera looked at her like she was being particularly dim.

“That’s the one. Anywho, she found Samson, there was a big to-do about it, people losing their shit and all. It was pretty funny, but then we still couldn’t find you. Everyone was all worried and stuff. Why’d you go here?”

“Picked it at random,” Cassandra said. One of her last memories of her parents was a trip to Istanbul she’d taken when she was very young, all of them crowding onto the boat. Anthony had lectured her about history the whole way over, and she’d tried to push him off the boat.

“Well, nice job. Glad you ain’t dead.”

 

Isabela took her back up to France on the shipping network, since Cassandra hadn’t quite been cleared to fly on planes yet. The journey was long, Isabela stopping in every port, and the patience that Cassandra had held onto in Turkey rapidly evaporated. She was relieved when they finally made land in Paris and she was able to say wave goodbye to the smuggler.

Leliana was waiting for her at the dock, her hair hidden under a hood.

“You took my advice,” she said, her voice calm and still. “I was worried you would do something heroic.”

“You’re one to talk,” Cassandra said, and Leliana smiled at her.

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.” They walked arm in arm back to Leliana’s car, and drove back to headquarters.

“Your place was ransacked after you were found to be a traitor, I’m afraid. I wasn’t able to remove all of the incriminating material.” Cassandra narrowed her eyes at Leliana.

“You mean…?”

“The whole office now knows you’re a fan of Hard in Hightown, I’m afraid.”

It was strange to walk back into HQ, not because it felt different, but because it felt the same, as though the last few months had been nothing more than an idle fantasy lasting no longer than a train ride. This and only this was real: the somber doormen, the gun strapped to Cassandra’s waist, Leliana’s warm weigh on her arm. They went in under the doors together.

Cullen went still when he saw her and slowly set down his coffee. Dagna waved. Vivienne smiled and congratulated them, and then they were through and down into the maze of tunnels that spiraled down under HQ like some sort of reverse tower. Their shared office was down at the bottom, surrounded by a nest of cameras and computers, the cold center of their information network.

“You’ve been reinstated in full,” Leliana said, and handed her a folder.

“Thank you,” Cassandra said.

“I didn’t do it,” Leliana replied, glancing over the papers. Cassandra stepped closer to her, close enough that she could see the fine lashes of Leliana’s eyelids when she looked up.

“No. Thank you,” she repeated, and kissed Leliana. It was a slow movement, telegraphed to give Leliana the opportunity to move. She didn’t move, but she didn’t respond either, her face still under Cassandra’s own.

“You don’t need to thank me like that,” she said when Cassandra was done.

“It’s not that,” Cassandra said, swallowing down the sudden shard of ice in her throat. “I’m sorry. I shouldn't have presumed. But I thought of you, when I was waiting.” Leliana studied her face and seemed, at last, to find whatever she was looking for.

“Come to my place tomorrow evening,” she said.

They completed the briefing. Cassandra, having no place to stay, went to Cullen’s house, where she retrieved one of her old suits from the back of his closet and stayed up into the night drinking beer and getting caught up on what had happened while she was gone.

In the evening she clipped her hair short again and set out for Leliana’s house.

Leliana greeted her at the door, her long hair hanging in a loose cloud around her shoulders. Cassandra wanted to touch it, to grab it in her hand. She stammered through the introductions and agreed too hastily when Leliana invited her in. They stood for a moment, looking at each other. Cassandra’s stomach was tangled in a strange mix of desire and embarrassment: Leliana was her colleague. Leliana was beautiful and ruthless and she had fought for years in same trenches as Cassandra, striving for the same impossible dream of a better world. Leliana had kissed her, once, and Cassandra had fled. She reached out and tremulously touched the warm, bare skin of Leliana’s shoulder.

“If I can do something for you, let me know,” she said, and leaned in. This time, Leliana returned her kiss, the soft brush of her lips like a bonfire. Cassandra’s skin felt hot and tight, warm with anticipation.

“That’s quite the offer,” Leliana said, lips holding back a smile. “Take me to my bedroom.” Cassandra lifted her carefully and took her through the back room, where she set her carefully on the bed. Leliana’s arms were around her neck, and it was easy to press her to the mattress, to taste her lips and the warm inside of her mouth. When they finally drew back from each other, Leliana was smiling, the expression warm and full on her mouth. Leliana’s skin was lightly freckled, her skin smooth and slightly scarred where someone had put a collar on her once. Cassandra wanted to run her lips over the scars and kiss the fine hairs at the nape of her neck.

“Ah,” Cassandra said, dimly aware that she had pinned Leliana to the bed. “Sorry. I should have asked.” Leliana snorted, a small sound in the silence of the apartment, and put her hand on Cassandra’s shoulder. A dizzying moment of disorientation, and Cassandra was on her back and Leliana was straddling her. It was easy not to fight, whatever some people might claim: Cassandra lay back and let Leliana clamber onto her, her weight heavy on Cassandra’s torso. She lifted her chin, or exposed her neck: however Leliana wanted to have it.

“You shouldn’t do that so lightly,” Leliana said.

“I think I’ll survive,” Cassandra said, smiling at the exasperated look on Leliana’s face.

“Terrible,” Leliana said, and bent to kiss her, her face soft and lovely in the warm light of the apartment.

**Author's Note:**

> Some celebrate the beauty  
> of knights, or infantry,  
> or billowing flotillas  
> at battle on the sea.  
> Warfare has its glory,  
> but I place far above  
> these military splendors  
> the one thing that you love.  
> \--Sappho


End file.
